Running 2 amps

[Steve Dennis]

Ok so here's the problem I've been trying to solve.

In a perfect world, I want to be able to have heavy as sh*t tube distortion, and beautiful clean tones, but i want to be able to seamlessly fade between the 2 in a live situation.

Does anyone know of any setup that would allow me to have basically 2 heads running into a quad stack (maybe with 2 speakers for each head? i dunno) with a seperate effects chain for each, and the ability to fade between the 2 with some kind of volume pedal?

I've recreated a similar effect using my GT-6 effects board, but the downside is it can't channel switch my amp so i have to use the terrible digital distortion. Any points in the right direction would be a great help

[TmcB]

Hmmm.

I'd look for a vol/pan pedal.

Put one set of effects and head on the left, one on the right, and set it to pan.

set your cab up for stereo and you're away laughing

[Steve Dennis]

That seems almost too easy hehe I'll have a look around. Whats involved with setting a cab to be stereo? I've only owned combos before.

[TmcB]

Some cabs have got stereo capability.
Generally, they'll be marked with 8 or 16ohm inputs.
Someone else can correct me but usually running speaker by itself will generally be 8ohms, using them together will be 16.
It should be a pretty easy thing to make it stereo capable.
What type of cab are you running?

[machina]

Does it have to fade between the heads? Sounds like it might be easier to run your effects in line with an A/B pedal at the end switching between the amps. Or, if you need the fade, you could save money and just have one overdriven head and you control clean/dirty with your guitar volume.

[sopachrga]

Have you checked out the "4 cable method" with the GT6, it is a way of running the GT using the overdrive from your amp, rather than the awful boss distortion.

[DSilence]

Just the thought of something like this sounds really cool as some amps have a short fall on either a clean or a dirty.

[Miza]

Might be worth checking out the "Tonebone" pedal range. They make pedals with speaker cable capability.

Pretty sure one of them allows two amp heads to be plugged in and switched between them running to one cab. Obviously it doesn't help with the whole blending thing, but perhaps it has the ability to be A, B and A+B which means you could run both at once?? Not sure if this would blow the cab though?

Alternitively, there are lots of ways you could do it if using pedal dist. Pan pedal with some splitter pedal of some description.

What about converting a dist pedal into a Wah housing and making the gain knob variable?? Is this do-able? Anyone?

[Aquila Rossa]

The thing that I think of first for somebody that wants to run a dual amp setup is the cost of keeping them running.
Like owning more than one car. Running costs are often overlooked when planning to buy cars.
Tube amps are the same, they need money spent on them, regularly if you use them loud alot.

[TmcB]

I found this the other day, seems to be what you're after but I have no idea how you'd get it, and it won't be cheap


http://www.tonebone.com/tb-headbone-vt.htm

[sambrowne]

I'd say you'd be better off deciding which you really care most about - clean or dirty. Then buying the amp that suits. If you use "heavy as shit" distortion regularly, presumably you're playing heavy rock/metal and the clean tone just needs to be functional, not transcendental. If a duel rec/diezel/splawn/engl is good enough for top metal bands, isn't it good enough for you too?

On the other hand, you may feel that clean tone is your priority. Get an amazing clean amp such as a Victoria, 65amps or Hiwatt and then try a bunch of boutique distortion pedals to find that heavy as shit tone through the amp.

[rickenbackerkid]

I like your idea of blending! I would get a Ernie Ball pan pedal and run one side to each amp. Then plug the heads into either side of a stereo 4x12. Only thing is you would have to mic it with two mics for gigs.

[Steve Dennis]

Yeh the tonebone doesn't address the fading idea which was the whole point in the first place If i could fade decently on a single amp i'd do it. Yep i've tried the 4CM with my mesa and it didn't work at all. Even if i could get that working, it still wouldn't be able to fade between channels, so it'd just end up using the preamp on the orange channel anyway, which is what I'm currently doing. The volume/pan pedal sounds easiest to me. Might experiment with that when i get some more cash free

Thanks for your help guys.